


The Wheelies Are Cutting Pavement

by Anonymous



Series: Return to Oz [8]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Depressed Eliot Waugh, Gentle Dom Eliot Waugh, M/M, POV Eliot Waugh, Protective Eliot Waugh, Protective Margo Hanson, Some Resolved (Platonic) Emotional Tension, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24698335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Eliot dealing with impending fatherhood, declarations of war, would-be assassins, magic shortages, Feelings, and some things he probably should have dealt with a while ago. And a surprising game of button, button, who's got the button...(another one with a few short chapters, though all from El's POV)
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: Return to Oz [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748788
Comments: 64
Kudos: 72
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Eliot the Brave

“Jesus, Eliot, don’t try to pin your bad mood on me because you’ve been like this for fucking weeks, so I know it’s not about the war and it’s not about your wife or your baby, so just talk to me. I mean, what crawled up your ass and died?” Margo groans, after an hours-long meeting that’s mostly been circling a fight like water down a drain. 

“ _Mike_.”

For the first time through the entire conversation, she falters. “Mike-Mike? As in Mike the guy who--?”

“The guy who I loved, who was possessed by the Beast the entire time I knew him, who was using Mike’s body to get into Brakebills and using me to get close to all of my friends who he wanted to kill, and then I had to kill him? That Mike? Yeah.” He folds his arms. “I needed you, and you weren’t here, and when you got home, you didn’t even _ask_.”

“El…”

“I can’t have this conversation, I am… too sober, and I--” He turns away, but there isn’t exactly anywhere he can _go_ , he’s the fucking high king of Fillory and he’s in a war council meeting, and he’s such an idiot for bringing Mike up now when there’s no way he can get through that talk… Even with the rest of the court dismissed, this is still an official meeting that they haven’t reached any kind of accord on, he is supposed to be in charge and he can’t even be trusted to control _himself_.

He just needs a moment to compose himself, he just needs a quiet corner, but Margo is right on his heels. Before he can tell her they absolutely can’t do this now, her arms are around him. 

“I can’t--”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“About the guy you hated that I was seeing in the first place? Gee, Margo, I don’t know.”

“I know I’m fucking… spoiled, okay, and selfish, and short-sighted, and a lot of other things that maybe I’m not so proud of, but I’m not a sociopath, El, why didn’t you talk to me?”

“Why didn’t _you_ talk to _me_?”

“I don’t know.” She sighs. 

“I mean you made it clear that my feelings were an inconvenience to you. I spoiled your party plans by actually caring about another human being, and when I was with someone, I felt like I could be better, like I could do something other than drink and party and try to forget myself. And I liked the person I felt like I was becoming. Like… I liked grown-up Eliot. Only it was all a lie. I was just being manipulated, by something evil that tried to kill Quentin and almost killed Penny, and I didn’t mind that you were off having a blast with Todd of all people while my life was going to shit, okay, that was fine, those were standing plans and I didn’t call you, I didn’t ask you to give up a moment of your break for me. I didn’t want to do that. But I thought when you came back maybe you would, like… notice or care that I was in a clear fucking downward spiral, and you didn’t. You didn’t _see_ me. Or you saw me and you ignored it. And honestly, I don’t know which is worse. And I tried, Bambi. I pulled myself out of it to help you with your golem problem, I tried to be grown-up Eliot, but I couldn’t be, because grown-up Eliot was built on a lie and I had to _kill_ a man, and he-- There was, like… a real possessed person, whose body I-- _did_ things to and then murdered, and I wasn’t okay, and no one… no one asked. If I was okay.”

“I thought you would get over it and we would be normal. I didn’t know-- I didn’t know how bad it was, I didn’t know what happened-- I thought it was something you would get over. Honey, I didn’t _know_.”

“I needed you to know. I needed you to know.” He shakes his head, but his arms finally come up around her in return.

“I thought we’d just go back to normal if I didn’t say anything, I thought you wouldn’t _want_ me to say anything. Like we’d fight about it and you’d tell me I was being a fucking hypocrite if I was concerned about how hard you were hitting it. I didn’t know how bad it was. I’m sorry. Shit, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I mean everyone had their own shit to deal with.” Eliot shrugs. “I couldn’t exactly ask people to drop everything and focus on me.”

“You should have. You should have and I would have.”

“Well… we should have done a lot of things differently. I can’t keep doing that thing where we pretend we don’t have feelings, Margo. I can’t. I tried very hard to not have feelings. And I am trying very hard to be grown-up Eliot, but I feel like… you lecture me about how we have to be responsible and then you go and start a war--”

“I wasn’t going to marry that cock--”

“No, you _weren’t_ , but I was going to buy us some _time_. I was going to buy us some time. And we were going to find another solution. And now that’s off the table, now literally the only terms of a peace agreement involve your hand in marriage and way too much of the magic we are still losing. And, as long as we’re not pretending not to have feelings--”

“You’re pissed about that.”

“No. I’m fucking _terrified_. I didn’t want a child in the first place, but since that’s out of my hands, I don’t want that child born into a war-torn country, and there are people who want my head on a pike and I… I am trying so hard to be a grown-up but maybe all I am is a fuck-up.”

“Anyone who wants to put your head on a pike is going to have to go through _me_.” Margo promises him, giving him one last hard squeeze before pulling away. “Okay? And… fuck, I don’t know, how hard can a baby be?”

“It’s a _baby_ , I’m pretty sure they’re hard. It’s why new parents always age a decade overnight and have bags under their eyes and walk into walls, and they’re usually coated in… various child substances. Children _ooze_ , Margo.”

“We’ll get really good at cleaning spells.” She says.

“You make it sound so simple.” He rolls his eyes. 

He is pissed, a little, that she voluntarily had sex with Ess but couldn’t handle even a whiff of marriage talk, while he’s stuck with a _wife_ , one he was _forced to impregnate_ , but they’ve had enough of an emotional episode for one day. 

“I don’t know… I don’t hate the idea of being Auntie Margo.” She reaches up and pats his cheek. “You have good genes, imagine a little baby with those curls. That’s almost puppy level cute. Look… since we don’t have a way back to Earth, we need to ration our shit out fucking carefully, but I have undereye serum. For when you age a decade overnight.”

“Thanks, Bambi.” He kisses her forehead. 

“I love you, okay? I mean as long as we’re not pretending we don’t have feelings. And… I’m sorry I was a raging bitch about you maybe loving someone other than me. I won’t do that this time.”

“What do you mean this time? There’s no this time.”

“Your one thousand percent a feelings thing Thing for Q kind of feels like a this time.”

“And if I kiss him, I get hit with a ray of heteronormative marriage-enforcing enfeeblement. So there’s no this time.”

“He’s into you.”

“I know. That… doesn’t make it easier.” Eliot shrugs. If Quentin was just some straight boy, if the crush was doomed from the start, he could let it go. But it’s seeing the way Quentin leans towards him, the way Quentin reaches back. Seeing the way he _reacts_ … Knowing they want the same things so desperately and they can’t have them? It’s _torture_. 

And not the fun kind.

Not that it’s torture, even of the fun variety, that he wants. Not really. He wants to spoil Quentin rotten, mostly. And okay, yes, tie him up once in a while. Make him kneel or crawl or beg, but he’s always found the carrot to be more fun than the stick. 

“Well, why don’t you go and find him?” Margo suggests. “Maybe it’s too much to hope for a wellspring update, but we should at least fill him in on the war council.”

“I’ll get him.”

He’ll feel more right, if he can talk to Quentin. Getting things aired with Margo is a good thing, but it’s exhausting, and with Quentin, he feels like he can… he can go to him and he can just _be_ , even if the thing he is is broken. Quentin knows what it feels like.

When he gets to the library, Quentin is there. On his back, on the floor, underneath a man.

With a knife.

His hands are moving before he can consciously think about it, he’s pulling the man off telekinetically even as he’s rushing forward, even as he’s shouting for guards, hurls him into the bookshelves and physically picks Quentin off the floor and pushes him back towards the opposite wall, keeps himself between Quentin and his attacker until the guards have dragged the man out.

“You just saved my life.” Quentin gasps, as Eliot turns and pulls him into a hug. 

“What-- what happened?”

“Um… I guess, I guess… I don’t know? I mean he didn’t read out the whole manifesto or anything, but apparently I foiled a previous assassin’s attempt at getting you alone and so, uh, yeah.” Quentin melts into his chest.

“Did this ever happen to the Chatwins?”

“We’re dealing with a lot of things that never happened to the Chatwins.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I’ll probably be sore in the morning but I’m okay. You smell good. Sorry, that’s not-- I mean, it’s true, but I didn’t-- I shouldn’t say it.”

“Yeah, you brought me my stuff.”

“What is that?”

“That’s honeysuckle, plum, and cherry blossom. You like it?”

“Yeah, it’s nice. It’s, um… Sorry.” Quentin pulls back, looking away. Cheeks all pink and lip worried between his teeth, how tempting to brush the curtain of soft hair back from his face, how tempting to take his chin and tilt him, knowing how easily he would acquiesce.

“We thought we ought to fill you in on the war, but-- I mean, maybe now is not a good time…”

“No. No, we should have a, like, monarch meeting. I learned something, and… I don’t think it’s a good idea, but we can keep it in our back pocket, for if nothing else works and the war effort goes… not good.”

“The war effort is not going good.” Eliot nods. “Margo’s waiting, she’ll be glad to have something back pocket-worthy.”

“Wait--” Quentin turns back to Eliot, halts Eliot before he can turn to head back to the throne room. Leans in close and buries his nose against Eliot, breathing in deep. “Okay, I’m set.”

“Sorry, were you just--”

“We’re not going to talk about it right now.”

“Right.” Eliot files Quentin _smelling_ him under ‘things we keep in that big box of feelings we ignore because of Eliot’s marriage curse’. Well, not smelling _him_ , smelling the perfume oil he’d been delighted to find stashed in his shower caddy with his less optional grooming products. Only one of his little collection, but he’d be glad to have it even if it wasn’t a Q-magnet. Dabbing a little scent on is just another layer of armor, a little mood boost-- and this one Margo had picked out. He’d been sure it was a little too feminine even for him, but once it dried down on his skin it didn’t feel that way, a testament to her wisdom in these things.

They reach the throne room at the same time as Tick. Julia is already there.


	2. Eliot the Merciful

“Absolutely the fuck not.” Margo says, in a tone he normally wouldn’t argue with. 

Their circumstances are far from normal.

“Well, I hate to pull the ‘I’m high king’ card, but I’m high king, bitch. We’re out of options.”

“We’re not _that_ out of options.” 

He looks around the room for some support, but honestly, so much is going on that everyone’s attention is probably pretty fractured. After they’d all come in bearing news, Fen had come in with the captain of the guard and Eliot had had to put a pin in deciding on the punishment for Quentin’s would-be assassin, because if it was up to him in the heat of the moment, the punishment would be ‘death by angry magician’, and he and Quentin would probably both feel bad about that after the fact, not to mention the potential PR disaster. Margo had filled Quentin in on war stuff, Quentin had told the rest of them about his last-ditch back-pocket wellspring solution, _Julia_ had told them about getting the button from Alice and wanting to come and make amends by helping them save Fillory after everything Alice had told _her_ , and then Tick took a turn to talk and gave Eliot his brilliant plan for not going to war.

“All in favor of Eliot’s brilliant plan to save our fair kingdom from the ravages of open warfare because he is truly a selfless monarch who lives for his people?” He asks. Tick and Julia both raise their hands with him.

Margo also looks around the room for some support.

“All opposed to Eliot’s dumbass plan to get his ass killed because he’s a sloppy bitch who lives for the drama?” She asks, and Quentin and Fen both raise their hands with her.

Eliot turns to Fen. It’s… easier than appealing to Margo, and much easier than looking at Quentin.

“We can’t have a baby with Fillory at war, we’d be a major target, our family wouldn’t be safe.” He takes her by the shoulders. It’s a low blow, perhaps, it’s playing a little dirty to go straight to ‘not safe for the baby’, but it’s what he’s got.

“My baby can’t grow up without a father.” She fires back.

“Growing up without a father is _hardly_ the worst thing in the world. It’s my job to make sure the kid _gets_ to grow up. And everybody else’s kid. And… I am responsible for making this kingdom safe. And I am going to do that.”

“Do you even know what the fuck you’re doing?” Margo asks, rolling her eyes.

“Broadly, yes. It would be nice if my near and dear believed in me a little. Tick believes in me! Julia believes in me!”

Julia gives a shrug and a nod and a facial expression that speaks to some divided loyalty, after Quentin’s vote against. 

“If you’ll excuse me, I have a lot to do right now.” Eliot draws himself up, calling upon all of his considerable poise, and he sweeps out of the room. 

He’s careful not to look at Quentin, but it’s Quentin who finds him in his room, not doing any of the things he ought to be doing. 

“That door was locked.”

“Really? It opened for me.” Quentin folds his arms. “Eliot, you can’t do this.”

“It is my responsibility--”

“You made me a _promise_.”

Eliot looks up, startled, and Quentin strides up to where he’s sitting on the edge of his bed, eyes blazing. Eliot reaches up, finding Quentin’s hand, linking their fingers. 

“I know. I remember.” He nods, his other hand moving up to curve around the side of Quentin’s neck.

“Margo is worried you might not… care enough about… living.”

“Well Margo doesn’t know about our pact. Does she?”

“No. She-- she did say she thought I should be the one to talk to you, but… she wanted to, um… she called, like, a girls-only council? She’s strategizing with Fen and Julia, I don’t-- I don’t know what about. Given how many things we’re dealing with right now.”

“I care about living.” He promises. “I do. But… I’m one person. Fighting an old man. So that our citizens don’t have to fight a whole-ass war. So that our cities don’t get sacked, so that innocent people don’t suffer.”

“I love you.”

“Q, you--” Eliot’s hands fall away. The entire world falls away. 

It’s not news and yet it rocks him to hear the words. 

“I know. I can’t, we can’t. I know. But if you are going to do this thing, then I get to say it. I get to say it once.”

“Okay.” He places his hands on Quentin’s waist, thumbs stroking in gentle arcs. “Okay. I mean, you know…”

“I know.” Quentin strokes Eliot’s face. “I know. And… I know nothing gets to change just because we want it and just because life is… _really_ scary right now. But I-- I need you to know.”

“I know.” He nods. It’s the only thing he knows. He is lost, and Quentin is the one thing in the storm he’s found. 

“A lot. Am I allowed to say it’s a lot?”

“No. But who’s counting?”

“It’s a lot. It was so slow at first I didn’t realize it was happening and then it was everything. And it was too late. But you have to know, because you have to live. I need you to really want that.”

“I really want that.” Eliot nods, solemn and serious. He rises, and pulls Quentin into his arms, holding him close, careful as if he was spun sugar, something sweet and fragile and lovely. “We made a pact, and I am going to try my very hardest. Whatever happens… whatever happens, we made a pact, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to do everything I can, baby.” He runs one hand through Quentin’s hair. “If I fail it’s not for lack of trying. And… if-- if I do-- Whatever happens, you still have to…”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

“You have to be king for me.”

“Eliot…”

“Quentin. Whatever happens… you’re my king. You also made a promise. When this thing is all over, either we toast my victory together, or we do not see each other for a very long time.”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“Okay, good. Now… I should practice for this. I should… go back and find out where I can get a sword.”

“You think?”

“Okay, okay, no comments from the peanut gallery, thank you.”

“Mm.” Quentin snuggles in against his chest, breathing him in again. “You smell like if I licked you, you would taste good. Oh-- oh god--”

“Oh god…” Eliot groans, head falling back. He lets Quentin pull away, Quentin should probably pull away now, but then they catch each other’s eye and all Eliot can think about is all the places where Quentin could lick him, except that Quentin can’t actually lick him anywhere at all.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean-- I shouldn’t have-- I just… I really like that, um, cologne on you. And you, I just really like you, and today has been a long day, and… god, sorry.”

He’s out the door before Eliot can say anything else. Maybe there’s nothing he _should_ say. Maybe there’s nothing he can do in this rotten fucking situation but channel all of his frustration, all of his rage at these backwards realms and the circumstances they’re in and the asshole who tried to stab Quentin into trying to get good at this whole sword thing.

How hard can it be? He’s seen The Princess Bride three hundred times. He just has to do that. 

The sword part, anyway. It’s a little late to run away from matrimony on the back of a white pony so that he can share a beyond-perfect kiss with the boy he loves. 

Eliot never found Inigo Montoya very relatable, in that the idea of a positive father-son relationship sounded fake, but he can vibe with coping with failure by drinking yourself into a stupor and instantly befriending a badass with a stand-out wardrobe. And he’d always loved the spectacle of the swordfighting scenes.

“Inigo, you and I have our differences when it comes to how we feel about our fathers and how tall we think the ideal boyfriend is, but at heart we’re two bad bitches with important quests and fabulous hair.” He says out loud, to his empty room. “So I need your fictional spirit to guide my sword, because I don’t really want to die.”

He does wind up with a sword, he winds up practicing late into the evening with Quentin and Margo looking on in anxiety and skepticism. 

“You need to get serious.” Margo says at last, as Eliot pauses to wipe his brow and catch his breath. 

“What part of me jumping around the furniture waving a sword doesn’t look serious to you?”

“I mean you need to get _mean_ , baby. You need to be ready to end this man, because he does _not_ get to end you. Capisce?”

“I’m serious.”

“Find your fire, get mad!”

“That is very much what I’ve been doing!”

“No, you’ve been trying to swashbuckle your way around the room like this is all highly choreographed. Take a walk, clear your head, find your killer instinct. Q and I are going to talk wellspring stuff.”

Eliot nods. “Right. We… don’t get to stop worrying about one problem every time another one comes up. Okay. Okay, you two talk, I’ll get my head right.”

He pauses as he passes them, looks at Quentin just a moment too long.

Walks on.

When he stops walking, he finds himself down at the dungeons, sees Fen pacing the corridor. 

“What are you doing down here?” He asks.

“Nothing. You-- The guards want to know what punishment, for the prisoner. You didn’t have an answer earlier.”

He doesn’t have one now, but he motions for a guard to open the door, striding in and getting his first real good look at the man who had attacked Quentin. 

He doesn’t look like a royal assassin. He looks like just a guy. Like, he’s _their age_ , probably. Somehow that part weirds Eliot out.

He holds up a hand before the man can speak. “Ah-ah-ah, no talky. You are going to listen to me--”

“I don’t listen to tyrants.”

“Oh, honey. You’re not going to listen to me because I’m king. You’re going to listen to me because I’m a fucking magician, and I’m fucking pissed.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t swear--” Fen starts, from behind his shoulder.

“I shouldn’t swear in front of the _zygote_? This man tried to kill-- he tried to kill my friend, and he got really close, and I am definitely not done swearing.”

“He’s not a zygote, whatever that is, he’s Fillorian.”

“No, that’s not-- Wait, he wasn’t sent by Loria?”

“No, he--”

“I am a proud citizen of Fillory, and we reject your rule, children of Earth.” The man spits.

“Okay, here’s the deal.” Eliot snaps. “I don’t care who you are, actually. Do you know why I haven’t decided on your punishment yet? I haven’t decided on your punishment because every time I think about seeing you on _my king_ , all I want to do is _fucking_ tear into you myself. I want to magically _eviscerate_ you, and I want to do it on the biggest stage in Fillory, so everyone can see what happens to anyone who lays a hand on _my king_. And the only reason that is not your punishment is that I am very busy, and also because tearing a man to pieces sets a bad example. And because Quentin hasn’t asked me to and I doubt he will. So you can thank me for that borrowed time you’re living on-- not as your king, which I never asked to be, but as a very dangerous man with a very good friend. One that you will _never_ touch again.”

He turns to find Fen has been backing him up by making emphatic throat-slitting gestures from behind him, which is… sweet, maybe? He appreciates it, anyway. He ushers her out and she holds tight to his arm, her head leaning against it. 

“You are a king.” She sighs, her hand stroking over his in a way he wishes he could take comfort in. “And a magician. I have something for you.”

“Oh, that’s okay, the baby surprise is about all I can take right now.”

“No-- something you definitely want.”

So… not sex, which is a promising start to any conversation with his wife. He slows to a halt, and Fen turns to face him. 

“... Okay…” He nods.

“Something that can help you win this duel.”

Well. That’s definitely promising.


	3. Eliot the Spectacular

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The duel with Idri.

Eliot might actually win this duel after all. He’s got a spell, he feels… not un-confident. And… and he has the pact he made with Quentin to maybe give him some kind of an extra push. Margo and Quentin both accompany him to the field of honor-- it’s Margo who’d convinced Fen to stay back with Julia, citing her condition. 

He’s feeling good, though, or he’s feeling as close to good as he thinks he gets to feel, and then he sees King Idri.

“Oh _damn_ , so he’s like, a _zaddy_.”

“What’s a zaddy?” Quentin’s brow furrows. 

“ _You know_.” Eliot nods.

“No, I don’t think I _do_.” He folds his arms, _adorably_ huffy. Eliot’s never seen real jealousy on Quentin before, the Fen situation’s always been what it is. If Quentin was ever jealous of something before, Eliot hasn’t been aware of it-- and there wouldn’t have been the same depth to it.

“Baby.” He cups Quentin’s chin, with a teasing pout. “You know I like my men… fun-sized.”

“Hey. I’m not… _fun-sized_ , where it counts.”

“I’d feel the same way even if you were.” He lets him go. “I’ve, uh… I’d better…”

“Wait--” Quentin snags his arm. “Wait, show me your sword-- the hilt.”

“What?” He does so, even though the request leaves him more than a little confused. Carefully brings it up by the cross-guard to let Quentin inspect it. “What about my sword? It’s fine.”

“Yeah, almost.” And Quentin pulls the black hair elastic from around his wrist and loops it twice around the sword’s grip, slides it down snug against the cross guard and then leans forward to lay an impulsive kiss to the pommel-- impulsive, but not hasty. Which is an image Eliot can work with, if he’s honest. That’s about where they are, this is enough to do it for him. 

“What’s this?”

“For luck. You know, like… knights, and-- I don’t have a handkerchief, or a ribbon, or like… a very good token I can give you, when you go into battle. I’ve just got this.”

“Hey… Thank you. And-- I made you a promise, didn’t I?”

He nods, and Eliot wraps his hand around the grip, and brings the pommel up to his own lips, just briefly. 

“Get a room.” Margo groans.

“Wish we could.” Eliot rolls his eyes.

“I believe in you.” Quentin tells him.

“You’ve got this, baby.” Margo nods, stepping up to kiss his cheek, even if she has to grab him and drag him down to do it. “Make mama proud.”

“Always.” He kisses her forehead in return. 

“No one’s allowed to kick your ass but me.” She reminds him.

“Thanks. Margo… if--”

“Uh-uh, no ifs.”

“ _If_.” He shakes his head, pressing a finger to her lips. “This is important. If I lose… Fen, take care of her, okay?”

“Yeah, of course, but you’re not going to lose.”

“You and Quentin take her back to Earth, help her get settled, and… you know. Baby shit. Have Julia take you guys all back, before anything can happen to you. If Loria takes us, don’t stick around to get deposed, or… forced into a marriage of your own. And, um, there are… I wrote letters. They’re in my room. So… yeah.”

“Go on.” She sniffs, and pats his shoulder. “I’ll take care of everything. But you’re going to win.”

Margo and Quentin settle in to stand side by side, arms around each other, and Eliot takes the field to meet his opponent. Casts the spell Fen gave him. Focuses. 

There’s a brownout. The duel was going great up until then, it’s going markedly less great once he gets hit. Eliot is pretty sure the pain would be worse if he wasn’t experiencing a lot of adrenaline and like… whatever other survival stuff is going on in him. 

He hears Quentin’s voice, it’s distant. Agonized, like he’s feeling the pain that’s so dulled for Eliot. Screaming his name. He has to fight the urge to turn and look at him.

But it’s a brownout, not a blackout, and once magic is back on, everything’s fine. The cut’s not deep, not deep enough to stop him. He’s pretty sure he’ll heal over instead of bleeding out, how long can one duel last? Quentin will just have to find the inevitable scar deeply sexy. Maybe Fen will find the inevitable scar deeply unsexy. Maybe now that she’s got a baby they don’t need to do that ever again anyway, but he wouldn’t mind… he wouldn’t mind if she was put off by him now. 

Okay, not everything is fine exactly, because it is still a duel and it’s a lot weirder than he imagined, like the rules are a lot less rules-y than he’d imagined, and one minute he’s pulling off some very cool swashbuckling hero style moves, the next minute he’s chasing King Idri into the fucking _woods_.

“Just so you know, this is not how I saw my day going!” He shouts, scrambling over a fallen tree trunk. A small enough one that it’s not too indelicate a scramble. “This isn’t how I wanted to settle things, either! I wanted a peace treaty! We could have done this without bloodshed, just so you know!”

“As long as it’s your blood that’s shed, my day is going according to plan!” Idri’s voice echoes through the trees, but Eliot can’t tell where it’s coming from. 

“You seem a decent fellow, I hate to kill you!” He adds, even though it’s probably too much to hope that he’d get the response he wants.

“Presumptuous, Magician!”

Yeah, too much to hope.

“Well, you know! That’s just the kind of guy I am, I guess! Are you going to come out and fight me, or…?”

“I thought I’d wait for magic to go out again!”

Okay, that’s fair. That’s what Eliot would do if he was in Irdri’s place. Still.

“Dick move!” He shouts anyway. 

Idri’s voice is moving around, but while the spell might have given him preternatural abilities where swordplay is concerned, but it hasn’t made him a wilderness tracker. Or… whatever he’d have to be to trace someone’s voice through a forest. Like, a bat. 

The first flash of movement Eliot spots is a bird taking off because of all of the shouting. The second flash is white, like the shoulder of Idri’s coat as he ducks and weaves through deeper cover. 

Eliot does have to give him one thing, the coat makes an Impression. He’s not sure if he actually likes it or not, but he _respects_ it. 

He doesn’t like the cat and mouse game, he doesn’t like being in the woods, he doesn’t like not knowing how everything’s going back in the field with Margo and Quentin and the Lorians and whether tempers are flaring as they all wait also not knowing how things are going, with the duel. He really doesn’t like when magic blinks back out, _out_ -out, and the shoe’s on the other foot. Being the cat was stressful enough, being the mouse is going to fucking give him a heart attack. 

At least the atmosphere is still opium-y-- opiate-y?-- because that’s probably the one saving grace, as Eliot sheathes his sword and starts clambering his way up the biggest tree he’s seen since entering the woods. He never imagined being grateful for any aspect of his upbringing, let alone his father, but at least the old man taught him how to climb a tree and apparently it’s like riding a bicycle, because his body remembers how to do it and how to do it _fast_.

Okay, so it was less a heartwarming moment of father-son bonding, less the intentional teaching of a Properly Boyish Skill, and more the kind of thing Eliot taught _himself_ to do because his father wasn’t going to get a fucking ladder and try and haul him down out of a tree while drunk, and while he was cutting enough sober he was at least predictable that way. Still, he learned, didn’t he? It might not have ever literally saved his life before, but it’s going to now, because magic or no magic, Idri can’t climb _up_ without giving Eliot a hell of an advantage defending his position.

And he’s barely caught his breath when Idri finds him, so…

“Really?” Idri raises an eyebrow. 

“I thought I’d wait for magic to come back on again.” Eliot shrugs.

“Is that not a 'dick move'?”

“Mm, well, see… dick moves are kind of my _thing_.”

Idri starts swinging at the trunk of the tree, and while it doesn’t feel _great_ having it shake with every blow, Eliot’s position is secure, the tree is fucking huge, and Quentin… Quentin’s going to get magic turned back on, isn’t he? If the blackout doesn’t end on its own, won’t he?

Eliot groans and grips at the tree after a particularly hard swing. Yeah, being the mouse _sucks_.

“Look at it this way!” Idri calls up to him. “Plenty of time to compose your last words if you do decide to do this the hard way!”

“You know, this isn’t how I imagined my death at the hands of a devastatingly handsome man.” Eliot says-- and flattery may not get him a reprieve, but it startles Idri into pausing mid-swing. “Yeah. I kind of assumed, you know… it would probably be because I went home with a sexy axe murderer or offended a fragile heterosexual. Or, like… maybe some guy would ask me if I wanted to try super-heroin and I’d say ‘yeah, sounds fun’ just because I really wanted to suck a dick, ‘cause I’m not really into needles, but I mean God knows I’ve partied hard enough in my time, and then I’d overdose and die without even getting to suck his dick, knowing my luck.”

“... Are those really the last words you want? I am honor-bound to tell your people any final statement you give to me. Though I suppose they will be my people, after your defeat.”

“You said I had plenty of time to get there. And ugh, no, definitely don’t. Not getting to suck dick is a sensitive subject right now, that’s all. Honestly, if I hadn’t promised Quentin, I’d probably just be resigned to all this, but here’s the thing, Quentin loves Fillory, and I promised I would protect it. And Quentin loves--” He has to swallow past the sudden lump in his throat, the sudden sting. “Quentin loves me, so I… promised to protect that, too. I’m not too great at it.”

“I will treat your people fairly when Fillory becomes a Lorian territory.”

“Queen Margo, King Quentin, they’ll leave Fillory forever, just don’t hurt them, but I-- My friends aren’t part of this duel to the death. They’re also king and queen of Fillory but they didn’t choose this, they told me not to choose this, so… _Please_ , I-- I can’t just let you kill me, because I promised, but… just, if you could let them grab their personal effects and vacate the castle, you’ll never hear from them again, they will go to a land far away and never return. All I care about is their safety.”

“Their exile is acceptable to me. I’m a widower myself, I have no desire to cause undue suffering to someone newly in that position.”

“Oh. Um, no-- I mean, thanks, but no, Margo’s not my wife. I mean I have a wife. A pregnant wife. She’ll go with them. But that would be… weird. I mean we’ve-- it was weird, actually. But yeah, no.”

“I was referring to King Quentin-- that was him, calling you back to his side before our duel?”

That hurts. It’s immediate, in a way being cut wasn’t-- though he can definitely feel the ache now and he’s bled a lot in climbing up the tree, probably made the injury a lot worse. Probably made himself a lot weaker, but without magic it doesn’t exactly matter. It’s a knife twisting in his heart.

He never even really got to _daydream_ about it, he was robbed of even that much. His fate was sealed before he understood how much Quentin truly meant to him. He’d known it was possible, he’d known Quentin was his type, but it wasn’t something real to him until it was too late, he never dreamt up a future for them, he never even got to plan an actual _date_ , not one they could admit to.

“That was Quentin. But like I said… I have a wife. I wish I didn’t, like if I wasn’t so fucking… desperately in love with this sad little nerd, I kind of hate having a wife so much sometimes I’d probably just ask you to make it quick. You know what, okay, my last words… I want Fillory to know I’m sorry that I failed them. And that all I wanted was to be the high king that Quentin Coldwater deserved to see rule Fillory. He loves this place so much more than… so much more than anyone I know, even Margo. It’s their exile and not my death that’s the real loss to Fillory.”

“Noted.”

“I also didn’t really expect to be opening up to the guy who’s trying to kill me, but I guess today’s just full of surprises. So what about you? What are your last words, if magic comes back on and I win this thing?”

Idri chuckles. “I have never had to give them to an opponent before. Very well, should you win… It was my pleasure and my honor to fight bravely for Loria.”

“Catchy. _Kingly_. I’ll remember them.”

“I don’t expect you to have to. But you are an interesting opponent.” Idri nods, and then he’s back to chopping, and Eliot is back to holding onto his perch and feeling the tree beneath him shudder.

He has no way of knowing how much time passes, with him up a tree-- the forest is too thick for the shadows to be reliable, and it feels longer than he’s sure it is just because he’s a weird combination of bored and terrified, and in kind of a lot of physical pain. He runs his fingers over the hair elastic wrapped around the hilt of his sword, and he thinks about Quentin. It’s the one pleasant distraction he can count on.

_Quentin_. Eliot had written him a letter, but he wishes now he’d said the words. Even if it hurts, even if it’s hard, he should have said it just once, out loud. He wishes that just once he’d taken Quentin’s face between his hands and said ‘I love you’.

He imagines it so clearly now. Imagines that before he’d taken the field, he had done so, felt the gentle warmth of Quentin’s skin, the softness of his cheeks, the barest rasp of stubble along his jaw. 

_Quentin the Stalwart_ , that’s how he’d have started. And _my king_. And then he would drink in the sweet darkness of his eyes, and the rhythm of his breathing and the parting of his lips, the weight of his expectation and that hope-against-hope, and he’d say _I love you so much more than I thought I could ever love a boy_. He’d say _I just need you to know that whatever happens today, I have been so privileged to know you_. He’d say _I’m so sorry we never got our fair chance_.

He would finger the leather cord around Quentin’s neck, that he’d just glimpsed thanks to the open collar of his tunic-- a nice one, blue, not the same blue as he’d worn to the ball… the one he’d worn that night, when Eliot had found him in the library. When he’d ached to kiss him outside his door, when he’d ached to say yes to the offer of Quentin’s bed, to sleeping in peace without having to think about his wife. He would finger that leather cord-- his, around Quentin’s neck, it’s so close to satisfying something he didn’t know he wanted-- and then he’d draw the ring out from under his tunic. Slip a fingertip through it and lift it to his lips, the way Quentin had bent his head and left that _deliberate_ little kiss against the pommel of his sword. They can’t kiss each other, no, but what’s to stop either of them kissing a mere object? He should have done, holding Quentin’s eyes with his own.

He should have said _I’m so sorry we never got our fair chance, but my darling little Q, my king, however long my life is, the better part of it is yours now. My heart and my soul and every good thing I’ve done since you crowned me high king of Fillory until the moment of my death is a tribute to you. You don’t know how precious you are to me, how badly I’ve needed you in my life_. He should have said _I love you so much that the way you love me has made me reevaluate my worth_ , and _every time I’m with her, I think of you, I whisper your name in my heart and I imagine touching your body and I focus on the memory of your smile and that’s how I survive it, Quentin, you’re how I survive it_.

There are enough things he’ll never get the chance to say, but he should have said those things. He should have left behind a kiss.

He wishes he knew what Quentin’s magic feels like. Quentin made it sound like such an experience, made his sound so sensual. He’s seen Quentin perform magic but he’s never performed a physical spell on Eliot, he doesn’t know how Quentin’s smells or feels or the color of it. He thinks it would be calming, grounding. Soft… but strong. He thinks it would be sweet.

He’s thinking about Quentin’s magic, when magic returns, feels the change. It’s like that first hit of caffeine on a slow morning tenfold, it’s like a part of him is coming to life. The zing and tingle, an electric shock, blood rushing back into a limb that’s gone dead. It takes a new level of discipline to manage to form the tuts he needs cleanly, speaking of dead limbs, his whole arm’s gone weak and his hand feels clumsy, but he marshals himself and he manages, floats down delicately to land beside King Idri, his sword drawn.

And… also speaking of dead limbs…

“Here’s the thing.” Eliot points his blade at Idri’s throat. “You’ve dulled your sword and worn out your arms, so I don’t really know what you thought you were going to do with me even without magic on my side, because I’ve been having a nice rest while you’ve been doing all that, but it doesn’t matter. Quentin, the-- the boy I love, who I-- He asked me once, if I thought I was a brave king, or a merciful one. And I told him I didn’t think I was either. But today, I think maybe I am both. I’m _not_ going to kill you. Your son is going to apologize to Queen Margo, and then you are going to accept peace on my terms, because I had every right to end your life today and I refused to. You were… a very good opponent. Loria is fortunate to have such a noble ruler. But Fillory has Quentin and Quentin has me, and I… I don’t have a lot, but I have magic and I’m really good at climbing a tree while bleeding. Which I guess is enough. Deal?”

Idri is silent a long moment, just staring at him, which is not really how he expected it to go and not ideal, but at least he’s realized that with Eliot’s sword right up against his throat, there’s no move he could make that wouldn’t end in his death.

“Please don’t make me kill you after all that stuff about mercy.” Eliot adds, with a moue of distaste.

“Deal.” Idri just barely nods, dropping his sword and offering his hand. “I expect your mercy to extend to my people.”

“Please, the last thing I want is to rule another country right now.. Your people are your problem. But… the measure of my mercy shall be determined by the sincerity of the apology Margo receives.” Eliot sheathes his sword and accepts the handshake.

“I shall impress that point upon my son.”

“And maybe points for style. The coat is very…” He gestures, uncertain as to how to end that sentence. “Two kings with our flair for the dramatique should be allies, not enemies.”

“And what of your Quentin?”

“This was actually a good day for him, wardrobe-wise, so you see what I’m working with.”

Idri laughs. “I simply meant to inquire, now that you have secured your victory, will I be expected to send a wedding gift?”

“I-- I have a _wife_.” Eliot’s brow furrows. He’s sure he’d mentioned that, he’d said ‘pregnant wife’ in a low-down and dirty bid for sympathy. And maybe spoiled it a little by saying having one of those made him want to die, but… well, c’est la vie.

“But not a husband?”

  
“ _No_.” He draws the syllable out about as long as it’s possible to do without becoming a cartoon about it. “ _Why do you ask_?”


End file.
